Trina Spencer<\/strong>,\u00a0research director at the Institute for Human Development at Northern Arizona University, is on a mission to help remedy a national\u00a0reading crisis through the design and roll-out of an\u00a0academic language intervention curriculum called\u00a0Story Champs<\/a>.\u00a0The program\u00a0is being sought after by educators across the nation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more than a new curriculum and a new assessment tool,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cIt\u2019s a system of academic language development that required the development and validation of quick, easy to use assessment and intervention tools.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the past ten years, Spencer and research partner\u00a0Doug Petersen<\/strong>, a University of Wyoming researcher and professor, turned countless research findings into real practice for preschool and school-age children. Their goal is to improve reading comprehension of all children, but especially those who are culturally and linguistically diverse and economically disadvantaged, by focusing on oral language development.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung children cannot write what they cannot say,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cWe assume kids understand what is said to them and that couldn\u2019t be farther from the truth. We are no longer the white, middle class America we were when we set up the structure for teaching reading years ago. We\u2019re a diverse population with diverse language skills yet, until Story Champs, oral language had not been integrated into the way we teach kids to read and write.\u201d<\/p>\n Spencer shared that many children do not have sufficient language skills to comprehend what they read, yet the primary grades still focus on decoding words. A shift to inferencing, vocabulary, storytelling and domain knowledge has been sorely lacking.<\/p>\n One eight-week Story Champs intervention with second graders at Wyoming Indian Elementary School\u2014where the focus was on oral language and not writing instruction\u2014resulted in a three-grade-level jump in writing performance. After the intervention, students were producing writing that was more complex than that of the fifth graders in the same school who were receiving only writing instruction.<\/p>\n Over the years, Spencer and Petersen have helped educators identify 10 percent of the student population with comprehension challenges who would have otherwise slipped through the cracks. The free assessment tools\u00a0developed for teachers\u00a0to\u00a0easily identify intervention needs can be found at\u00a0languagedynamicsgroup.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Much to the delight of the research team, calls and emails praising Story Champs are pouring in from national Department of Education leaders who have implemented or are anxious to implement the program state-wide.<\/p>\n \u201cWe couldn\u2019t be more thrilled with the response we\u2019re getting,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cEducators in Wyoming, Utah, Alaska, Colorado, Michigan and Virginia are using the program and are seeing first-hand how oral language intervention massively improves writing and comprehension skills.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"TrinaSpencer2\"](\"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/TrinaSpencer2-1-300x211.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"StoryChamps-AB\"](\"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/StoryChamps-AB-300x254.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cAs an educator who used Story Champs with at risk students and language-impaired preschoolers in Michigan, I was surprised to learn when I took a position in Phoenix that Story Champs was relatively unknown in the state,\u201d said Colin Macpherson, a speech language pathologist. \u201cWe have clear evidence that strong oral language skills are the basis for reading comprehension. We must focus on developing oral language skills in preschool, and Story Champs is the best curriculum on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n